Couple witnesses history first hand

August 25, 2014

BLACKFOOT — Henry Miles and his wife Carol didn't know what to expect when Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963 arrived.
The couple had grown up in Blackfoot, Idaho, and didn't know a lot of black people although they were now living in Washington, D.C. There Henry had met Glen Roane, like him a contract negotiator who purchased underwater ordinance for the Polaris submarine. Roane was black and had grown up in Viriginia.
"As time passed I learned he had received his law degree in 1957 and had taught in high school and carpentered until 1961, when pressure from the civil rights movement enabled him to secure a professional job," Miles wrote in an unpublished memoir.
Miles learned that he and his co-worker, who was becoming his friend, had more in common than in difference.
Eventually their paths diverged, but each man had learned something from the other. Over the years Miles examined the LDS Church's stance on blacks and the priesthood.
Read the rest of this story in Tuesdays Morning News paper.